Daily Archives: July 2, 2012

Welcome! This is the first part of a series of posts in which I will profile the apps and services I found essential to my first year as a law student. The first semester I restricted use to a laptop. After receiving an iPad 2 for Christmas, the second semester was limited to in-class use of the iPad and free reign while at home.

I encourage you, as Apple would say, to ‘Think Different.’

Evernote.

Evernote is a note taking service that goes beyond just text input. Evernote allows for pictures, documents, recordings, and more. To start, I created notebooks for each of my courses. Evernote allows the user to save notes, but they are logically organized into notebooks for storage. Evernote saves the data to your device (i.e., your computer) while also automatically syncing throughout the creation, or editing, of notes. The best way to think of Evernote is as one of those huge spiral notebooks with the different subject divisions. Evernote provides the notepaper and the pockets to store your notes as well as any handouts or slides the professor will post or share online (along with the occasional audio or picture note you capture).

I’ve seen a lot of my peers using Word or OneNote to take notes in class. One of the most beneficial uses I find with Evernote is the automatic online back-up of my information. I don’t have to worry about losing my notes with my computer. There are a large number of other benefits which I will get to with each of the individual Evernote clients.

If you don’t already have an account, I highly recommend taking the time and setting up an account. It is FREE. Evernote offers a variety of tiers for different services, but I find the basic (free) tier to be more than enough for my needs. Evernote has a web interface, desktop application, iOS app, Android app, and plenty of extensions to further the functionality of their services.